Scott Morrison and the premiers will consider a national emergency response for the aged care sector, as well as new principles to manage domestic borders, when they meet for Friday’s national cabinet discussion.
The PM, premiers and chief ministers will attempt to sign off on agreed national protocols for managing outbreaks in aged care facilities after a furore over whether the commonwealth had been caught flat-footed in the Victorian outbreak. They will also attempt to come to terms over border closures to allay growing frustration from the business community and be given an economic update from the Treasury secretary, Steven Kennedy, and the Reserve Bank governor, Philip Lowe.
Leaders will discuss the national vaccine strategy after Morrison this week flagged signing a letter of intent with the British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to supply Australians with the University of Oxford Covid-19 vaccine; consider the latest on the outbreak in Victoria and discuss trends in mental health. There will also be a discussion about the Pacific labour scheme and seasonal workers.
Frustrations about the border bans imposed by several state governments have been escalating over the past few weeks. Scott Morrison has been searching for a way to help restart interstate trade and commerce by convincing states to ease their border restrictions, despite being forced out of a high court challenge against Western Australia’s border ban under pressure from the premier, Mark McGowan, earlier in August.
With the community and business agitation escalating, Morrison wrote to premiers and chief ministers this week urging them to allow freer movement across borders to keep supply chains open.
After bowing out of the WA case, Morrison wrote to McGowan on 7 August proposing a national strategy on borders based on the principle that states should not act “arbitrarily or indiscriminately” in blocking movement, should consult with the commonwealth and affected states, and put administrative arrangements in place to minimise disruption.
At a Covid-19 inquiry hearing on Thursday, tourism industry leaders made their pitch to ease border bans, warning that intrastate tourism will not be enough to stop massive job losses in the sector.
The Australian Tourism Industry Council proposed that after 14 days of no or negligible community transmission a state should outline a process for reopening their borders within 28 days.
Border controls should have “nationally consistent administrative arrangements” and be reassessed regularly using transparent criteria, the ATIC chief executive, Simon Westaway, said.
On Thursday the agriculture minister, David Littleproud, urged premiers to find a “workable solution to state border issues”, warning they had become a “flashpoint for our federation” and the states risk “becoming irrelevant to modern Australia” if a solution isn’t found.
“While we support evidence-based restrictions to protect human health, ongoing border restrictions on large sections of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia that have no Covid-19 cases are posing major challenges on agricultural supply chains, as well as on the health and welfare of residents,” he said.
Littleproud noted the prime minister had written to state premiers on 16 August urging them to “set aside politics and parochialism” to come up with solutions to border problems including workforce movement and medical exemptions.
